Acemoglu and Robinson (2000) argue that historically economic rents have been less successful than political rents in preventing reform and innovation. Contrary to this conclusion I argue that the important margin of distinction for factors preventing deregulation is not whether rents are...

Child care has become increasingly important as more women with children work. As more children spend more time in non-parental care, states have put in place licensing requirements with the intention of improving the quality of out-of-home care. However, regulations and licensing requirements...

Political involvement has long been shown to be a profitable investment for firms that seek favorable regulatory conditions or support in times of economic distress. But how important are different types of political involvement for the timing and magnitude of political support? To answer this...

Peter Boettke is the single most effective graduate mentor in the Austrian economics tradition today. One of the many teaching tools Boettke uses is the devil's test. The test is an effective teaching tool because it clarifies what the goals of the political economist as critic can be. Boettke...

The most important distinction between Virginia political economy (VPE) and the other branches of public choice scholarship is a close affinity of the former to Austrian economics. Contributions in both the Virginia and the Vienna (Austrian) traditions have emphasized this connection and...

Bryan Caplan's book The Myth of the Rational Voter (2007) supports the idea that voters indulge in holding irrational beliefs about economic policy because the cost of doing so to the individual is negligible. As a consequences, socially and economically destructive policies receive widespread...

This paper investigates the linkage between macroeconomic factors and the price stability of individual securities in a unique setting. Using a large sample of 327 American Depositary Receipts (ADRs), we test whether economic freedom in the ADR home country reduces the level of ADR volatility....

This paper examines how productive entrepreneurial activities, such as innovation, influence unproductive entrepreneurial activities, such as regulatory rent seeking. We argue that the former may increase the latter. Confronted with a situation in which innovation erodes their monopoly returns,...

This paper analyzes the effect of economic freedom on the liquidity of financial markets using a non-traditional approach. Using a sample of 393 American Depositary Receipts (ADRs), we examine the liquidity of these securities while conditioning on the level of economic freedom in the ADR home...